10mExclusive: Probation officers ‘under pressure to lower risk rating of offenders’, whistleblower tells Channel 4 News
Jackie Long
Social Affairs Editor and Presenter
Serious offenders released into the community enter a legal grey area.
No longer in prison but still under the supervision of the Probation Service, which is charged with assessing and lowering the risk that former prisoners pose to the public. But something, it seems, is going wrong.
Figures obtained by this programme show that on average, every week a serious offender on probation is convicted of murder.
And in an exclusive interview, a serving probation officer has told us she and her colleagues feel pressure to assess offenders as ‘lower-risk’.